The advertising industry has spent decades trying to convince itself that what it does is essentially the same as making movies, only shorter and with more legal disclaimers. Now Wieden+Kennedy, the independent agency that has spent forty years resisting that particular delusion while nonetheless producing some of the most cinematic work in the business, has decided to test the proposition directly.
The Portland-based agency, which remains one of the last major independents in a holding-company world, announced the creation of W+K Entertainment, a division devoted to developing original films and television projects. The unit will also, according to the agency, help clients who wish to break into Hollywood — a service that presumes there are chief marketing officers who lie awake at night wondering why they are merely running global brands when they could be taking meetings in Burbank.
The new division's first project is a film featuring Bad Bunny, the Puerto Rican musician and cultural force whose audience makes most Super Bowl advertisers look like they are speaking to a book club. Details about the project remain appropriately scarce.
Wieden+Kennedy has, of course, been producing work that looks like entertainment for years — the agency's campaigns for Nike, Old Spice and others have long operated on the theory that if you make something people actually want to watch, they might watch it. The entertainment division formalizes what has been an informal ambition, while also creating a revenue stream that does not depend on the annual holding-company procurement ritual. (Whether Hollywood's business model is any less capricious than advertising's is a question the agency may soon have occasion to consider.)
For an industry that has spent the last decade watching its talent depart for streaming services and production companies, the move represents a kind of counteroffensive — or at least an acknowledgment that the fence between the two yards has never been particularly tall.
Original story published in adage.com: "Wieden+Kennedy creates entertainment division for movies and TV shows - Ad Age"